tcpdf custom font weird characters - php

Question

I am trying to use a custom font in my tcpdf file.
$pdf->addTTFfont('../../../fonts/RedHatDisplay-Regular.ttf', '', '', 32);
addTTFfont does:
TCPDF_FONTS::addTTFfont($fontfile, $fonttype, $enc, $flags, $outpath, $platid, $encid, $addcbbox);
This is my Code.
It just gives me weird chars when creating the pdf. The thing is, if I use the RedHatDisplay-Italic.ttf file, it just works perfect. Do you have any ideas what I can do?

Answer 1

So I had the same issue with the Quicksand font. The issue was the font itself (or the resource where I got it from).
I tried multiple resources, because in the past I downloaded Google Fonts (like Lato) and they worked.
So for Quicksand the downloaded font from
https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts failed
https://www.fontmirror.com/quicksand worked
CAUTION It looks like if the font already exists, it won't be overwritten by TCPDF_FONTS::addTTFfont so you need to manually get rid of an existing font first (probably from previous adding in vendor/tecnickcom/tcpdf/fonts) .
Other than that, the following code just works fine:
Only call this code once to add the font
<?php
$fontnames = [];
$fontnames[] = TCPDF_FONTS::addTTFfont('fonts/Quicksand Bold.ttf');
$fontnames[] = TCPDF_FONTS::addTTFfont('fonts/Quicksand Regular.ttf');
// Make sure you use the real font name. Different file names may (or may not) produce different font names.
die(print_r($fontnames, 1));
This code then for generating the pdf
<?php
$pdf = new TCPDF('P', 'mm', 'A4');
$pdf->SetFont('quicksand'); // This is the fontname from above
$pdf->AddPage();
$txt = '0123456789 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVQXYZ';
// print a block of text using Write()
$pdf->Write(0, $txt, '', 0, 'C', true, 0, false, false, 0);
$pdf->Output('test.pdf', 'I');
exit(1);